be a piece of verbatim reporting, done by a person. whose merit is a retentive memory. These life-like scenes are autobiography. The heroine is naturally the writer's self, made to look as she thinks she looks, or as she wishes to Heaven she might!"
The opinions, the aspirations of this character or that—they are the woman-novelist's own. The fact that, as the books multiply, her heroines are found to be widely different in outer aspect and in spirit—that is: a trifle easily negligible. If there is no heroine, why, then the woman-writer must be the boy of the story. Otherwise it must be that she has imagination, which is plainly preposterous.
If a woman had written "Macbeth," her critics would have believed she must have murdered her husband; or, if he wasn't her husband, the more shame!
Until society is differently constituted let no one expect that women in general will adventure lightly upon truth-telling in their books.
The older generation may even have the excuse that the doom of the false witness has overtaken them. In the end they believe their own lies.
Even the young and clear-eyed may stand abashed before the great new task, and for another generation the woman may still write her book but to weave another veil, the while she makes her bread—or perhaps her cake.
If the faculty for telling the truth is in itself a kind of genius, as has been said, the use of our mere
